


Cosmic Ghosts: A Guide to Letting Go

by pinstripedJackalope



Series: Keith's Binder [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AI, AI isn't a tag either??, Artificial Intelligence, Burns, Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Dead Keith (Voltron), Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I can't believe naxzela isn't a tag, Keith (Voltron) Dies, Martyrdom, Mentions of Suicide, Naxzela, Post-Naxzela, Suicidal Thoughts, This isn't a happy fic, Trans Keith (Voltron), oh wait there we go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: This is the timeline in which Naxzela was a tragedy.  Keith's kamikaze dive into Haggar's ship's shield wasnotthwarted just in time by Lotor.  Keith Kogane, Red and Black Paladin of Voltron and Blade of Marmora, died at Naxzela that day.But good news!  Keith's consciousness was downloaded into the Castleship's AI containment system!  If that really is good news at all...





	1. Encounters

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this fic kicking in my WIPs literally since the day the Naxzela episode came out. I hope to get the rest of the fic out post-haste but we'll see how it goes. I have a lot of irons in the fire.

_———————_

_———————_

_———————_

_Camera 98IJX2G5_

_Deca-phoeb_ _1_ _̕͝0͏̵28̛҉3̨͝_

 _Movement_ _3_ _̸̡3̨͠_

 _Quintant_ _1_ _̵̨͘7̶͠_

 _Varga_ _8_ _͝҉҉_

 _Dobosh_ _7_ _̸̡̢3͡͞_

 _Tick_ _0_ _͡9̶͢_

_———————_

_———————_

_———————_

_Start encounter._

_Sound_ID: Footsteps. Identified: red paladin._

_Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Psssst!

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Quick, I don’t have much time!

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Uhhh—

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : I need a fa—a̶͏o҉i͝w̸̷j̕͜k͢s̢̡̕d̨҉i̵̢w̷͝e̷i̴—vor.

_Voice Detector Note: indecipherable_

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : I’m on my way to the training deck, I don’t really have time to—

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Oh, come on, Keith! It’ll just take a few minutes, _please_?

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : What do you need, exactly?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : My glorious and beautiful base model made a mistake while wiring us in and—wed͡s͞k҉̶sdk͏̶̢l̸̛ķs͏̧o̵̕a҉i̶j͠d͞s͠o̵̴i̵̴͝wk̛—we keep getting power surges. I just need you to reroute one wire and then you can go sweat yourself into oblivion for as long as you’d like.

_Voice Detector Note: indecipherable_

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : You said it’ll only take a few minutes?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Yes. Cross my digitized heart and hope to short circuit, it should take five minutes or less.

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Fine. Just tell me what to do, I guess.

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Thank the stars. Come in here—

_Sound_ID: Footsteps. Identified: red paladin._

_Sound_ID: Door opening. Identified: AI room._

_———————_

_———————_

_———————_

_Camera 98IJX2H2_

_Deca-phoeb_ _1_ _̕͝0͏̵28̛҉3̨͝_

 _Movement_ _3_ _̸̡3̨͠_

 _Quintant_ _1_ _̵̨͘7̶͠_

 _Varga_ _8_ _͝҉҉_

 _Dobosh_ 7̷̨5͠͡

 _Tick_ 1͜͢0҉7̕҉

_———————_

_———————_

_———————_

_Sound_ID: Footsteps. Identified: red paladin._

_Sound_ID: Static. Unidentified._

_Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : —and unscrew this panel. Use the tool that—yeah, that one.

_Sound_ID: Door closing. Identified: AI room._

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : This thing doesn’t look like a screwdriver.

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Well, I’m calling it a screwdriver. It’s more complex than that and I’m pretty sure it uses magnets to—

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Okay okay. Space screwdriver.

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : See, this is your problem. You don’t care about the finer things in life. It’s just fight, fight, fight with you.

_Sound_ID: Laughter. Identified: red paladin._

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : I don’t think nerding out about engineering is considered part of the ‘finer things’, Pidge.

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Yeah, yeah. You keep telling yourself that. Okay, you’ve got the panel open, now you need to grab that white wire and—asa̶s̕͟;͟͠o҉ḑi͜d͞͞s̴͏͘k͟i͏̵o̡i̴̡s̸i̕͞d̶͟͝s̵̢—ą̧k̴l̵s̶̕l̸͘͜d̴͏k̴̡ḑ̷̢s̴k̛͟͝dskk͘͞d̨sd̵̴j̴̴d͢͢ḩ̵͡ḑ̸͞f̢hd̷҉j̢͠d̶s̷̕s̵d̷—

_Voice Detector Note: indecipherable_

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : Uh… Pidge? You good?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : —d̴̵kk̛͡l̴̢sd̨͟͜k͏̶̧d̨̛͠s͠҉k̶ao̸͡i͢w͟͟e̸f̢j̸̢s͞͡d̸̴͡m̡͢͜n̴a͜҉̧s̷̵k҉̴di̧d̢so̴f͢a͡k̨̕l̷͘͢s̶̨d̡̢̨—

_Voice Detector Note: indecipherable_

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : Pidge. What do I do with the white wire? 

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : Pidge?

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Where’d you go?

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Uh… hello?

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Did you short circuit or what?

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Figures.

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Guess I can just… do some stretches until you come back?

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : …I’m talking to an empty room.

_Sound_ID: Sigh. Identified: red paladin._

_Sound_ID: Footsteps. Identified: red paladin._

_Sound_ID: Footsteps. Identified: red paladin._

_Sound_ID: Movement. Identified: red paladin._

_Sound_ID: Silence._

_———————_

_———————_

_———————_

_Camera 98IJX2H2_

_Deca-phoeb_ _1_ _̕͝0͏̵28̛҉3̨͝_

 _Movement_ _3_ _̸̡3̨͠_

 _Quintant_ _1_ _̵̨͘7̶͠_

 _Varga_ _8_ _͝҉҉_

 _Dobosh_ 9҉̨2͟͜

 _Tick_ 3̴̕9͜͢

_———————_

_———————_

_———————_

_Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : —attach it to the thing that looks like a—uh, Keith? Where—?

_Sound_ID: Footsteps. Identified: red paladin._

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : Over here. You shorted out.

_Sound_ID: Sigh. Identified: green paladin AI._

_Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Ugh! I can’t _believe_ I *** up such an obvious wire connection… this is so embarrassing!

_Sound_ID: Laughter. Identified: red paladin._

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : Language, Pidge.

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Oh, shove it up your ***.

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Would if I could, truly. Can we get back on track, now?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Right. So, that white wire there—that connects to the thing that looks like a mechanical—a͢o͏҉i͡a͝͞e̛̕w̵̢k̴͡k̢͡d҉sk—beetle. Dunno what it is, just know that you want to go slowly because if you do it all at once you’ll—

_Sound_ID: Sparks. Unidentified._

_Sound_ID: Grunt. Identified: red paladin._

_Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Yeah, you’ll do that.

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Thanks for the heads up.

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : I tried! You’re all ‘shove things in the sockets, ask questions later’!

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Whatever. What do I need to do now?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Tighten that nut right there. 

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : Like that?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Tighter. Keep going until that light turns blue.

_Sound_ID: Click. Unidentified._

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : There it goes. Anything else?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : You’ll want to reboot the system. That one’s pretty easy—just hit the big button on the keypad over there.

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : Okay… is that it?

 _Vocal_ID_GP/AI_ : Well… actually…

 _Vocal_ID_RP_ : What is it?

_Sound_ID: Sigh. Identified: red paladin._

_Vocal_ID_RP_ : I’ll be back after training tomorrow.

_———————_

_———————_

_———————_

_End encounter._


	2. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naxzela and Pidge's journey through the first part of grief.

Exactly one spicolian movement after the second death of King Alfor of Altea, may his soul rest in peace and his people, what’s left of them, live on beyond him—exactly one spicolian movement after that, Pidge Holt shoots up from her desk in the green lion’s hanger with an idea.

She’s been having a lot of them recently—helping the Alteans fix up six million computer glitches from the corrupted crystal and restarting All The Systems is great mental stimuli, it seems. Her brain has been working at six times capacity for the last eight quintants. The only reason she knows that it’s been eight quintants is because she stole a ticker from Coran’s stash, ‘cause otherwise she would be too far in her projects to have any clue what time it was. She should really be getting more sleep. Actually, thinking about it, she should probably be getting some right this moment, but now the idea is in her head. She’s not going to be able to shake it. She just… she HAS to start working on it.

That’s how the rest of Team Voltron finds her, later that morning: bayard between her teeth, feet wriggling in the air, the upper half of her body crammed below the metal plating of the AI room as she works to reach an inner circuit board in order to reconfigure the system so that it would be closed off from the rest of the Castle’s programming.

“Uh… what you doing?” Lance is the first to ask, and he pinches her ankle, making her yell and drop the bayard into the innards of the panel she’s currently upside-down in. By the time she wriggles free, everyone is standing around and staring at her, having been diverted from their single-filing down the hall toward the training deck for today’s exercises. She fixes her glasses and doesn’t tell them that the training deck is in a whole other wing of the castle. They’ll figure it out eventually. Maybe.

“Well, I got to thinking about the ghost in the system,” she starts, ignoring Lance’s overextended shivering at the word, “and it struck me as odd that the AI had complete access to both internal and external systems, systems that had absolutely nothing to do with the memory storage units. There’s code there to prevent the AI from utilizing that connection, so there was less than a one percent chance of an AI glitch occurring that could take over navigation or engines, but obviously we know it can happen, and depending on how much of their plan the galra infiltrators managed to send to their superiors, it might happen again. The AI program is a useful program—obviously King Alfor was a very important figure—but knowing that an AI can brute force their way through to sabotage the ship, it seemed dangerous to keep it unaltered. So I’ve been working on rerouting a small energy source to—"

“Wait, you’re… altering the AI containment system?” Shiro asks, crouching down beside her to get a look down into the floor.

“Well… yeah. I don’t know, it just seemed really important suddenly that we fix it for future use. It’s probably a good thing that we couldn’t force Sendak’s download into our archives, because with his knowledge and uh… personality? Yeah, I’d say he would be a top contender for ramming through the firewall and causing some prime pandemonium.”

Shiro scrunches his eyebrows together, switching his gaze from the panel to her. “And have you… talked to Allura about this?”

That stumps her a moment. Technically… and literally… no, she didn’t. She’s altogether too excited to feel too terribly bad about not asking permission first, but she accepts a truce to pause her machinations and go eat breakfast while Shiro heads to the command center to formally request consent for this endeavor. 

Whatever happens between Shiro and Allura that day, Pidge may never know. Did Allura cry? Probably not. She’s so tough and regal—she hardly ever seems to allow herself to feel those kinds of emotions around the paladins. Whatever does happen, however, Shiro comes back half an hour later with explicit, unambiguous authorization for the project to continue, looking soft and sad under his small smile. Pidge doesn’t think too hard about it. She pushes it from her mind, the same way she is learning to push Matt’s smile from her mind in order to focus during training. There’s a time and a place for those emotions, and this isn’t it.

In the end, their training turns into a day of fiddling and experimentation in the AI room. Shiro ropes Lance and Keith into some sparing in the corridor while Hunk sits and helps with the circuitry, everyone comfortably close after the havoc of the last week. It takes a few hours, but eventually they find enough crystal shards to power the computers without hooking the AI computers to the main power grid. With a triumphant shout, Pidge shoves everyone to the pods downstairs to test some downloads and tweak the AI room settings.

It’s nice, that day. All the paladins are together when they take turns downloading themselves into the castle. Shiro talks his way out of it at first, citing the fact that he would rather not subject them all to his scrambled mind just yet, but by the end of the day even Keith I’m-Over-This Kogane has had a turn in the pod, convincing him to just do it. 

“ _Shiro_ doesn’t look like he’s sucking a lemon,” Lance laughs, with a prod to Keith’s side, and that’s it. They’re all in the system. The crystals are working just the way they’re supposed to. There’s no chance of a rogue AI corrupting navigation again. For Pidge, it’s a job well done. They spend the evening laughing at the ghostly versions of themselves, starting a dance-off that Shiro and AI Shiro win by a landslide. The next day, Pidge finds something else to fixate on for a while, forever drooling over the ship and getting her hands into places that she probably shouldn’t. She forgets about the AIs. They all do, she thinks. There’s no reason to go down there again.

…until Naxzela. Oh, Naxzela.

It’s the damnedest thing, when Haggar’s shield goes down with seconds to spare, because for all of two ticks _they made it_. Lance whoops into the comms, Hunk cries, and Shiro, relief flooding his voice, calls out a _good job_ to Keith for saving their hides. And in return… there’s silence. It’s just Matt, voice broken, and the sound of him slamming his fists against the interior of the rebel ship until he walks too far away from the mic and the audio drops.

Then there’s Lotor, but despite the proximity of the comet ship and the way Lotor’s ego subtly comes over the communication line as he takes credit for the deed, he’s shunted to one side. The unanimous vote is that they’ll deal with him in a second. Just a second. _Just_ until they can grab Keith and get him safely on the castleship—no one can think about negotiations until Keith is safe.

Negotiations don’t come, not that night.

What does come is a body, cautiously picked up amid the debris, the remnants of the little galra fighter plucked from the vacuum by Red’s gentle teeth. They have to listen to Lance fighting his way through scorched metal to wriggle a hand in, looking for a sign of life, a pulse, only to find none. They have to set down in the hangars and watch Shiro burst in, taking metal plates off with his bare hand, the glow lighting his face from underneath until he can finally hold the boy in his arms and lift him free. They have to guide Shiro to the medbay, smelling the miasma of fatal burns, right up until they seal what’s left of him in a cryopod pending… well, pending anything. Pending any idea of what to do now.

“I suppose there’s nothing else for it,” Allura says, her hands steady and her posture stiff. Her eyes don’t focus on anything in particular. “We’ll have to… ask him.” 

Incredulous looks break through the horrid, exhausted masks that adorn their faces as everyone turns to stare. The words sound crazy. He’s _dead_. You can’t ask a dead man what to do with his body. Is this it, is Allura losing her mind? If they go down one more paladin there’s no way they’ll make it, the war is as good as over.

That’s when Pidge remembers the AI room.

“Nose goes,” Hunk says dully, pressing his nose. Shiro has his face in his hands—that counts. Allura taps her nose in confusion, unsure what kind of custom this is. Coran follows suit. Matt scratches idly at the bridge of his nose. Pidge blinks.

Lance, however, groans into his elbow from where his arm is thrown over his face. “You can’t just do nose goes to determine who’s going to do the worst thing we could possibly ask someone to do right now. That’s stupid.”

Hunk lowers his hand. “Well, I don’t know what else to do. Draw straws? Rock paper scissors? No one wants to do it.” 

For fifteen minutes, they have a friendly argument about who should go. At least, it’s an argument between friends—Pidge supposes that constitutes a friendly argument, even if the topic they’re arguing about is nothing close. It’s cold, and dark, and she sees it taking its toll as Shiro’s hands start shaking when they suggest he be the one.

Shiro can’t, they decide. Hunk is now crying, hugging himself. Coran doesn’t ‘fuck with’ the AIs, as the earthlings say, hasn’t since before Alfor. Allura thinks that after everything, it should be a human who goes—so they understand the customs and don’t waste time asking unnecessary questions. It’s down to Pidge and Lance.

“I’ll go,” Lance huffs, but he makes no move to stand. In fact, Pidge is pretty sure he just sinks further down into his chair, his chest roughly level with his knees. He looks exhausted, same as the rest of them.

Pidge blinks at him, then switches her gaze to Hunk. She’s still half convinced that maybe… maybe this isn’t real. After all, they told her Matt was dead. Twice, actually. But both times he turned out to be alive and more or less well, kicking ass just out of her reach. 

But she saw the body, she has to remind herself. There’s that, this time. That’s something you don’t escape.

It hits her that she can’t remember the last real conversation she had with Keith. Not hard… nothing is hitting very hard right now. It’s all soft around the edges, people’s voices fading in and out while she tries to puzzle her way through this so that it just makes sense. She hasn’t talked to Keith one-on-one in a long time, and now he’s dead, and they need someone to go ask his downloaded ghost what to do about it.

Lance is still sitting there, but now Pidge can see the grit of his jaw, like he’s battling his own mind to convince himself to just stand up and go. “Do you want someone to go with you?” she asks, words curling off her tongue like steam off the surface of a cup of tea. She barely even notices her own voice. But then he’s making a shrugging motion, pretending he’s not really invested in the idea, even though his eyes lock on hers in a silent plea.

“Why, do you want to go?” he asks, indifference bleeding into desperation.

“Yeah, I… don’t want you to go alone. Ghosts are scary, right?” she says, and the words make some kind of sense because Lance fakes a shiver in that familiar way he does whenever they talk about hauntings and goes to take her hand.

The AI chamber is located near the center of the ship, a few levels below the command center, nearly equidistant between there and the paladins’ rooms. The two of them are just down the hallway when Lance’s grip suddenly tightens enough to be painful.

Pidge sighs and pats his knuckles. “You’ll be fine, just take a deep breath—”

He’s already shaking his head. “No, it’s not—I’m not _scared_ , Pidge, I—”

That’s when she hears it. Murmurs, like the rustling of reeds beside a riverbed. Low and melodic, like voices except not, somehow less than human. Pidge grips Lance’s hand right back, her mind working overtime—is someone else down here? Did Kolivan somehow come aboard and make his way all the way to the AI room before them? Because if not… there’s an intruder.

Pidge draws her bayard, and hears Lance do the same beside her. They’re both still in their armor, sans helmets, and their weapons shimmer into existence between one breath and the next. They creep, bayards out, right to the edge of the doorway to peek through the space glass, _and_ …

It’s no intruder. It’s the AIs. They’re just standing around, talking. Their voices are digital whispers on the air—buzzing with the code they’re made of, not quite clear enough to make out even now. Until Pidge hits a button just outside the door, anyway.

In an instant, their voices become clear. They continue on like they don’t even realize—they probably haven’t. It seems that they’re arguing.

“I just want to know why you’d go and off yourself! It’s not adding up, Mullet!”

Lance starts at the sound, thinned and digitized but now clearly an echo of his actual voice. Pidge grabs him around the neck, slapping a hand over his mouth so he won’t go and challenge the AI for dominance or something else equally dumb. The AIs shouldn’t know about this—they shouldn’t know anything. They aught to be deactivated, waiting in a storage cell for someone to come and call on them.

“We don’t know what really happened,” Shiro’s voice says, gentle but exasperated, like he’s been mediating between them for much too long. 

“I know what I heard!” the Lance AI says. He makes no sound as he strides across the floor, but the light shining through the doorway shifts and changes as he goes.

“You heard two words of a conversation as they walked down the hall—you don’t know anything!” snaps another voice, and Lance, the real Lance, gulps. Pidge hauls him backwards as AI Hunk then joins the fray, trying to get between the two of them, soft and gentle. 

“What—the hell—is going on?” real Lance whispers, staring slack at the door they’ve abandoned.

“I don’t know,” Pidge admits, voice just as low, as she starts to pace in a tight, quiet circle. 

Lance is running his hands through his hair. “Why are they out? They shouldn’t just be hanging around! I wasn’t ready! They were supposed to be deactivated! _You promised there would be no more hauntings!_ ”

“Maybe I accidentally screwed up a setting when I was adjusting the system? I haven’t been down here since then, don’t ask me questions!” Pidge snaps. What did she change? She can hardly remember, it’s been so long. She… cut off the wiring between the AI program and the rest of the Castle’s pseudo-electrical system. Added some power crystals to juice up the AI computer hub… tweaked some settings so that the hub itself required less power and took less time to charge and boot up an AI. Gave the AI’s some new movement, so that they could freely walk around their chamber instead of popping in and out of existence to move from one place to another. She’d been hoping to make them powerful enough to walk from the AI chamber out to the rest of the Castle, but then she’d been distracted and gave up the project.

Her best guess is that she managed to boost the AI power more than she remembered, and then forgot to turn them off. They’ve probably been up and running since then. Their independent power source means that they aren’t subject to power outages that effect the rest of the castle. Interesting.

The other option is that her own AI found someone willing to do the physical work in order to finish the tweaks she was planning.

She tells this to Lance, who doesn’t look thrilled with either option. “Let’s just get this over with,” he moans, and walks up to the door.

Everyone looks up at once, five bluish ghostly faces turning in tandem, as the door slides open. AI Shiro’s face settles into a mask of mourning as he rises to his full height from where he was leaning on a wall.

“So someone did die. You wouldn’t be here unless…”

Pidge nods. Lance, beside her, is frozen. She can’t see his face. All she can see is the shuffling of the ghosts as the AIs all look at each other, silently staring each other down until finally, AI Lance crosses his arms and leans into Keith’s space. “Well it’s obviously not me,” he hisses, waving an arm at the living Lance standing in the doorway. “Or Pidge, I guess. Hmm, I wonder who that leaves?”

“Technically it leaves me, too,” AI Hunk says, eyes huge. “Oh god, what if it was me? Did I at least get to kick some ass before I died? When’s my funeral? Don’t tell my grandma there are aliens there, just tell her they’re from one of those weird cults that worship body modification. She has a weak heart.”

“Hunk,” AI Shiro says softly, placing a hand on his arm. His eyes flick from Pidge to Lance… Lance to Pidge…

“But… there’s only two of them here,” the Hunk AI says, catching on. “Everyone else could be dead. Oh god, oh god, how bad was it? Was it a bomb? Or just too many troops? Don’t tell me there was a ship crash, please god… I used to have nightmares about suffocating in the vacuum of space, or watching you guys suffocating in the vacuum of space, or—"

“Hunk…” Lance cuts him off, looking from the flesh-and-blood Pidge to his own AI to Keith. His eyes stay there as he says, voice wavering, “There was only one.”

At that, the entire room seems to dim a little, the glow from the AIs fading back into the gloom, leaving Keith leaning on the center console, alone. All of the AIs seem to have pieced it together, now. They drift away, giving them space. The only one who stays is Shiro, who stands at Keith’s side with his hand pressed against his shoulder, and, off to one side, Lance, glaring a hole into the side of Keith’s head. Keith scuffs a shoe, avoiding eye contact. “Was it… was it me?”

The only thing Pidge can manage is a nod. Keith sighs, looking down. AI Shiro rubs his ghostly back, his hand skimming through it, leaving trails of pixellated sparks in its wake. Living Lance is frozen, huge eyes staring at Keith.

It’s quiet for a long, long moment.

“Ahem,” says Lance’s AI, clearing his throat loudly. He seems to take pity on them all, his glare fading into a softer, less antagonistic expression. “So… as much as I’d like to keep ripping this guy a new one, it seems like you came for something?”

“Yeah, uh… we have some questions for you?” Pidge breathes.

“Yeah, don’t we all?” AI Lance mutters. Pidge pauses, closes her mouth, turns to him. He stares at her for a long moment before laughing uneasily. “Look, we heard—we heard someone say that Mullet kamikazied himself, and I don’t know about you but for me that raises a LOT of questions, actually—”

Keith groans, running his blue, gloved hands down his face and glaring over his fingertips. He has the look of someone who has been having the same argument for some time now. “I’m _sure_ I didn’t want to. I was having some issues, but it wasn’t like I was ready to _die_ , _Lance_.”

God, Pidge forgot what these two were like when they first came aboard the castleship. The infighting was incredible. AI Lance rolls his eyes and opens his mouth for what Pidge is sure will turn out to be just another round of bickering, but Pidge intercepts to ask, “What do you mean you were having some issues?”

Keith furrows his brows, glancing between Lance and AI Lance for a moment before crossing his arms. “Look, I—he… I… _he_ used to come in here, sometimes. Just to talk. He—I—we? We always felt like we couldn’t just… blurt out our feelings when things got bad. But we learned how to talk to people over the years—we had to, or we would have died when things got shitty, I think. Sometimes he would come down here to talk to Shiro or… me.”

“Whatever,” AI Lance says. “You’re biased.”

“About myself?” Keith counters, rolling his eyes.

“Guys…” AI Shiro warns.

Keith and AI Lance both ignore him. They’re setting up for another round of bickering, that much is obvious. Lance trades a look with Pidge, biting his lip. They’re of the same mind, it seems—they need to turn off the Lance AI if they want to be able to talk to Keith without the whole thing devolving into squabbling every two seconds. 

A few quick gestures later and they have a plan. “Why did he even come down here?” Lance asks as a diversion, while Pidge pretends to have a coughing fit and surreptitiously heads toward the AI controls. 

“Oh, you know—just to hang around and be a— _oh_ ,” AI Lance says, and then he’s deactivating, his holographic body glitching into separate pixels, which then dissipate on the air.

“Sorry about that,” Lance says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I, um… had some pretty heavy emotional baggage that I needed to work through. I am actually curious why you—he?—came down here, though.”

Keith, visibly relaxing now, lets his arms fall down to his sides. He looks at AI Shiro for just a moment before shrugging. “He was helping the Pidge AI do the last of the tweaks she wanted to do,” he says simply.

That explains why the AIs were out and wandering around without an activation code. Pidge sighs, rubbing a hand over her eyes, under her glasses. All those ideas she had that she never quite got to—all her AI had to do was find someone with capable hands and talk them through it. “How many of the tweaks did you get to?” she asks, without removing her hand.

Keith hums somewhere ahead of her. “Um… all of them, I think.”

“So you can leave the AI room at will?”

A snort. “Well, no. She rethought that one. Said it might be dangerous for us to wander around unsupervised. But I can accompany you out of here if you take my AI chip and a crystal with you.”

That… actually sounds like a pretty good answer to a problem Pidge hadn’t even considered. Trust Pidge’s AI to outsmart Pidge herself. And trust Keith to surprise her even beyond life. The thought is hollow even as she thinks it. Talking about the connectivity of the universe, coming down hard on unjust leaders, fixing the AIs… yeah, Keith always did surprise her. 

Well then. There’s nothing else for it. Pidge drags her hand down her face, pulling at the bags below her eyes. Lance is standing exactly where she left him, shifting uneasily from foot to foot with a wary eye locked on Keith and Shiro’s digitized forms. AI Shiro looks worried, a wrinkle between his brows. He has eyes only for Keith. And Keith…

“I guess you want to take me to the others?” Keith asks quietly. He’s so much smaller than Pidge remembers him being. He’s taller than her—of course he is, everyone is—but she remembers bursts of energy, of fight that could not be contained, of fierceness and loyalty and a burning sense of justice. She’s forgotten the moments when he seemed small—when he stood in front of the limp form of the Black Lion after Shiro’s disappearance, for instance. Those moments were overshadowed by his anger, the way he’d lash out, his ferocity. Even his grief was big. So big that he couldn’t keep it inside, so big that it couldn’t be contained inside his body. He just… he was larger than life.

Pidge shudders suddenly. He feels so far away already—why does he feel so far away, so distant? She talked to him mere hours ago! _Alive_ —living, breathing, grinning at the controls of a zaiforge canon! How it is that everything he is, everything he was, is already so far in the past tense?

She can’t think about it now. She can’t. If she does she’s not going to be able to get through this, and she _needs_ to get through this. For the others. For Shiro.

For Keith.

“No,” she grits out. “No, just… we need to ask you some questions. We need to…”

Lance clears his throat. “Unless… unless you’d like to speak to Allura yourself?” he says, uncertain.

Another pause, another look between Keith and AI Shiro. Then Keith straightens his back, stepping forward. His ghostly face hardens into a determined expression, one more reminiscent of the Keith that’s relentlessly filling Pidge’s thoughts. “I’ll do it. You shouldn’t have to speak for me.”

“Right,” Pidge says, nodding. “Right. I’ll just…”

It takes just a few minutes to figure out the AI chips and the crystals. All the artificial intelligence data is stored in a massive data bank under the paneling that makes up the floor, but at the press of a button a temporary copy can be downloaded onto a chip that she can then pop into a mobile casing with a crystal inside. It’s efficient and effective, and Keith, the real Keith, must have spent hours down here putting it together at AI Pidge’s behest. 

Pidge chooses not to think about that. About the hours Keith spent with her AI, the things they might have talked about, the laughter they must have shared. She has a mission to complete—just one more mission, and then she’ll be free to change out of her armor, sit alone in her room, and break down.

The chip is downloaded in a matter of minutes. She fits it into the casing, switching the contraption on. A small blue light blinks. “Okay,” she says, and she gestures Keith forward, toward the door.

He goes. Silent boot-falls mark his journey across the room, his ghostly glow lighting the way. At the door he pauses, casting one last glance back at Shiro’s AI, before he crosses the threshold.

He flickers. Just slightly, just enough to cause Pidge’s heart to kick up a notch. Pidge holds her breath, watching closely… but he consolidates again once he’s on the other side, and her shoulders relax. It’s impressive work, if Pidge does say so herself. Almost seamless. She slips the casing into a small compartment in her bracer, feeling no real pride in the deed. It wasn’t her who completed it, after all.

Keith quirks a corner of his lips. “Let’s go,” he says.

She nods. Starts to walk, and… Lance. Lance isn’t with them.

A look back and she understands why. Shiro’s AI has his hand resting gently on Lance’s shoulder, speaking softly to him. The other AI’s are slowly starting to manifest again, each taking a spot around Lance as if to reassure him, to protect him, to comfort him. His shoulders are already shaking.

AI Lance catches Pidge’s eye, and with one hand, he waves them off. ‘ _Go on without him_ ,’ he mouths.

Pidge nods. Then she clears her throat and calls into her comms, “AI on the move. We’re taking the lower starboard elevator to the medbay.” It’s an update, but also a warning. She has him, but… if you don’t want to see him, it’s time to get out of the way.

The journey is quiet. Not just because Keith literally makes no sound as his feet touch the floor. It’s quiet because Pidge is still slowly turning everything over and over in her head, still silently reeling, still struggling to put her understanding of the universe back together. It’s quiet because Keith never was the kind of person to make unnecessary smalltalk. It’s quiet because that’s just the way this sort of journey is—contemplative, introspective, silent except for Pidge’s own heavy footfalls, her own heavy heart. They reach the medbay with hardly a word between them.

There, Allura is waiting. She’s found time to change out of her paladin armor—she’s now wearing full princess attire, complete with dress and crown. She’s alone.

Keith stands tall despite the silence of his movements. It’s like he’s making sure that he’s still there—making sure they can still see him, that he’s still present in the room. He still seems smaller than Pidge remembers. Is it because he grew in the months since the AI was created? Or is it just her imagination? Either way she lets the thought cross her mind and then lets it go again, guiding the ghost into the room.

Allura wastes no time. “What are we to do with… your body?” she asks, head held regally high to stall the tears glimmering in her eyes.

Keith takes a moment, walking around the pod. One slender, pixelated hand ghosts across the surface as he looks at his own still face. It’s not pretty—pieces of his mask sit, melted and dreadful, on top of deep burns that wind up his neck and head, covering more than half of it. Where the mask was fully scorched away the burns are deep enough to expose his jawbone. He doesn’t look peaceful… or angry… or anything else, really, under the glass. There’s not enough there to look like anything except very, very dead.

“…Well?” Pidge prompts, after she averts her eyes.

“I, uh… I don’t know, actually,” he admits. “I thought I’d have an answer but I don’t.”

Allura and Pidge turn to each other. “Well, I…” Allura blinks, helpless as to what to say, what to offer. “What do humans normally do?”

“A variety of things,” Pidge says. She adjusts her glasses on her nose, not because she’s particularly into the conversation but so she’ll have something to do with her fingers. “Sometimes we cremate bodies. Sometimes we bury them. Usually we have some sort of funeral or service. Maybe a wake. You usually choose some place that’s significant to the person and bury them or scatter their ashes there—sometimes families are buried together, but, well…”

They gloss over the part where they’re too far from home to bury him with his family. Whatever family that is Pidge doesn’t know—she never asked. Allura clears her throat, clears it again, and dives right into practicalities. “For the services, do you usually display the body?” she asks.

“Generally.”

“Generally. I see. Well, we have technology that can restore your visage, if you’d like us to do that? We can dock at any of the coalition planets to have the service. I’m not sure about cremation, but we certainly have the tools to dig. Is that… satisfactory?”

Keith looks over, his expression lost. Seeing his own body can’t be a pleasant experience. Pidge swallows. “Why…?” he asks, looking from Allura to Pidge.

Allura unfolds and refolds her hands. “Ehm… Why what?” she asks after a moment of awkward silence.

A twinge of frustration flits across Keith’s face, there and then gone. “Why are you even asking me? It’s not about me anymore, is it? I never thought I’d be part of the decision-making process. I just thought you would do whatever felt right to you. You know, whatever you needed to do to feel better.”

As if on cue, a wail rips through the air. Pidge feels her feet cement themselves to the floor, her entire body going rigid as she listens, trying to categorize the noise. It’s wild, pained, and she’s never in her life heard anything so gut-wrenching that it evokes a pure primal ache in her chest. Her entire nervous system is on fire underneath her skin—the hair on her nape stands on end.

“Shiro—” Keith says, shock on his face as he glitches momentarily.

It comes again. Then again. Hunk’s voice floats between the wails, trying to soothe, but it’s clear that he, too, is barely holding it together. 

“Well—” Allura starts, only to be interrupted by another of those gut-wrenching cries. Pidge winces, and Allura raises her voice. “— _I suppose that will be all for tonight. We will_ _… plan something, once everyone has had a chance to eat and sleep and_ —”

She closes her eyes against the fraught emotion of another wail. Shaking her head, she gestures for them to go—just _go_. Pidge doesn’t have to be told twice. She beats it from the room just short of a run, taking Keith’s AI with her as she goes. She gets into the elevator and—she doesn’t know where to turn. She can’t go back to the AI chamber, not with the chance that Lance is still in there, still crying amid a band of ghosts. She can’t go anywhere near the medbay and that awful _noise_ , so the command center and her projects there are out of bounds. The lion’s hangers have the wreckage of Keith’s pod, her brother is holed up in her room—there is nowhere safe to go. 

Except… perhaps…

Pidge hits one of the elevator buttons, wincing until the machine begins to rise, taking her away from Shiro and his grief. The ghostly image of Keith stays at her side, arms crossed, hands clutching at his sides. Pidge is unsure how much an AI can really feel, but he seems to be in shock, his eyes wide and his jaw slack. He even looks a little paler than he was before, his bluish tinge more pronounced.

“I’ve never heard him sound like that,” he whispers. “Never, not even when his grandfather died. I—”

Pidge shudders. “Me, neither,” she says. And she hasn’t—she’s never heard _anyone_ sound like that, except maybe herself. The sound has imprinted itself on her mind, in her bones—she’s never going to be able to wash that cry from her skin, her hair. It’s a part of her now, just like her bond with Green, just like Keith’s last words—

She slams a hand on the elevator wall, holding that thought hostage. She’s getting closer and closer to breaking down, she can feel it in the uneven shivers of her breath, the tightness behind her eyes. She can’t—she _can_ _’t_. If she breaks down now she won’t ever stop. She remembers crying in front of a grave marker with Matt’s name—it would be like that, only there would be no realization, nothing to bring her out of her grief. She needs a mission, a distraction, she needs—

The elevator stops and she stumbles out, her limbs floaty. Keith follows, follows—always following because that’s all he can do now, all his AI was made to do. He’s not real, not anymore—he’s not _Keith_.

She clenches her teeth, forcing that thought into the cage with the others. She’s coming up on the upper observation deck now—the view of Lotor’s ship docked next to them on an abandoned planet shakes her out of it, if only slightly. She has a mission, she does—Lotor will require Voltron’s presence at some point soon. And before that…

Sitting herself down on the floor, Pidge pats the space beside her for the AI. He pauses only a moment before lowering himself down.

“Pidge—” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“Tell me when he first went down to the AI chambers,” she says. “Tell me—give me a date.”

He does. And she begins the process of sifting through the castle’s video logs on her bracer’s holoscreen, looking… searching… for the first encounter between the Pidge AI and the real Keith. Looking, searching, for all the little things she missed.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers!


End file.
